I settled into one next to her that wasn’t even big enough for my left ass cheek, but I decided not to complain. For now, no one knew what I was. I would sit on hot coal if it meant I could keep it that way.
“The Cat in the Hat,” I read from the cover.
“An excellent choice,” Paige said from just behind us.
When she passed, the breeze she created cooled some of the sweat pouring from my body. I breathed in her sweet and spicy smell and let myself relax.
Paige sat in a small chair on the other side of Keisha, but instead of looking like she was about to fall out of it like I probably was, she owned it. She crossed her curvy legs and offered me a small smile.
I searched her face for a hint as to what she might be thinking, if she really did know about my nervous clicking fingers and was hiding it. But the longer I looked, the longer she held my gaze, giving me nothing. Soon, it wasn’t my nerves heating the room.
She had to feel that—that electrifying attraction charging the room and pulling us closer. It couldn’t just be me.
“Helllooooo? Stop your drooling, and let’s get to reading. I don’t have all day.” Keisha opened the book and slid it toward me. “You read a page, then I’ll read a page, okay?”
I tipped my chin toward Paige. “What about her?”
“I just want to listen. Don’t worry about me,” Paige said and crossed her arms over her chest when she realized where my eyes had slipped.
“Go, dude,” Keisha ordered.
Somehow I dragged my attention to the book in front of me. Paige shook her head in my periphery, and I grinned down at the first page. It was so much fun to wind her up.
It turned out that I had readThe Cat in the Hatbefore. Not a bad book. Keisha must have thought so, too, because by the end, she’d crawled into my lap and was flipping through it backwards to show me her favorite parts. Again. No doubt the girl would grow up to be just like Paige. Now, if only Paige would climb into my lap after she finished a book...
“You’re coming back to read with me tomorrow, okay?” Keisha grinned up at me, and I knew I was in trouble. How could I resist that smile?
“And you’re coming the day after that because we have forty-six more Dr. Seuss books to read.” Keisha put her arms around my neck and planted a kiss on my cheek. “Five thirty-two in the morning. Got it, Sam?”
A kiss and an upgrade from dude to Sam—yep, I was in trouble now.
“Got it,” I said.
Satisfied, she leaped off my lap and ran out of the room at full speed. That seemed to be heronlyspeed.
I turned to Paige, not completely sure I’d really just agreed to be here at five thirty-two in the morning. I expected Paige to have a big grin on her face, like she’d planned the whole thing to see a six-year-old fall in love with me. But her expression was softer, sadder somehow, while she stared after Keisha. When she caught me looking, she cleared her throat.
“You did good,” she said.
“Forty-sixbooks?” I asked.
She nodded. “I think she’s got it bad for you if she wants to share all of them with you.”
“Jealous?”
“Of her reading skills? Yes, I am.”
I kicked Keisha’s chair out of the way, grabbed a leg of Paige’s chair, and dragged her closer, so close our lips nearly touched. Her breath hitched. One of her nipples grazed my arm through her T-shirt, a perfect bud hard enough to cut glass. Her gaze slipped to my mouth, and hers fell open so I could feel her gasps on my chin.
Voices and laughter, most of which sounded like the after-effects of sucking too many helium balloons, drifted from the hallway.
Paige stood. “I better go help. I’ll send all the girls to you, okay?”
“Pretty sure they’ll find me on their own,” I said with a wink.
She snorted then disappeared into the approaching crowd, her dark ponytail swinging.
People wandered into the room, mostly stuffy business-suit types attached to little kids who pulled them in several different directions at once, but mostly toward the cake. Others, old and young, looked around at the books. I didn't think I'd ever been surrounded by so many literary types in my life.
